Current Projects:

Relief Team One has various on-going projects in effort to rebuild and educate Haitians. The following are the current projects that Ray is working on.

Orphanage Project

Relief Team One has hired 28 of the men trained by Ray Arana since February 2010 when he started teaching construction technology. Construction of the Orphanage complex, named Village de Notre Dame de Lourdes is well under way. Phase I of the project consists of installing the septic tank system, building a bathroom structure, a generator room, a well, and the rest of the building including a bakery, storage room, kitchen, and dining room.

The project had a set back when the roof of the preexisting vocational building blew away in a storm. Ray re-designed building to reinforce the walls and have a roof that now meets all anti-seismic and anti-hurricane standards. All of the buildings are made of cement blocks that are individually filled and strengthened by custom made reinforcement steel columns.

Fundrasing for Phase II (orphan dormitories) and Phase III (classrooms) is in progress.

Orphange Project Photo Gallery

Orphanage Blog

Craft Workshop Project

RT1 is facilitating the creation of a workshop at the Centre Saint Jean Bosco in Jeremie, Haiti that will help support the education of the 155 children that come to the school. These are the forgotten, children the ”Restaveks”  or “children in domesticity”. This is a practice that has been outlawed since 2004, yet today the UN estimates that 300,000 children live as slaves with families other than their own.

We provide craft supplies to make friendship bracelets, paper beads from recycled papers, scrunchies from old clothes, cards with banana leaves and seeds. At the craft workshop children will also learn to sew and make clothing such as scrubs for the local nursing school and hospital. Later on they will learn basic carpentry and make simple furniture pieces.  The supplies and market will eventually all be local. We are grateful for the generous support of Dr Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, The Children in Need Club and French Club of Loyola University Maryland.

Craft Workshop Photo Gallery

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Meet the Construction Crew

"Before we didn't know what we would become. Now I have something I can do, something for my country. I feel proud, I can build something. I had nothing to give; now I feel I am a man."

- Patrice